Politics, politics, politics (so long and thanks for all the fish)

[Lilbaz]

Whilst more advanced post-Oil countries, like Spain, just laugh at how enslaved we are to despots

Spain uses almost as much oil as the uk. With a smaller population.

List of countries by oil consumption - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

We're actually 76th on the list of amount of oil each person uses. Spain 53rd.

 

[SteveAWOL]

Infantry is a hard sell based on your opponents tactics. I'm sure man is quite prepared to pitch his wits against another, but being chased down by a tiny drone, is unfair. Not from a tactical pov, just from a 'my life is worth more than this' pov. The cost is massively lopsided.

And the rate things are developing....front lines won't exist.

Imagine being hunkered in a bunker and then you see a dragon drone overhead about to rain down molten thermite on your position

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[Rorschach]

Imagine being hunkered in a bunker and then you see a dragon drone overhead about to rain down molten thermite on your position

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I saw one vid of a heavy drone carrying in one of the ground drones, which are about the size of a golf buggy, say. The ground drone had a couple of heavy-calibre machine guns mounted on it, and it pummelled the brick out of some russian position in a building. When it ran out of ammo, it drove into the building and detonated. It is getting more like some dystopian sci-fi movie every day.

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

I saw one vid of a heavy drone carrying in one of the ground drones, which are about the size of a golf buggy, say. The ground drone had a couple of heavy-calibre machine guns mounted on it, and it pummelled the brick out of some russian position in a building. When it ran out of ammo, it drove into the building and detonated. It is getting more like some dystopian sci-fi movie every day.

Video games becoming reality....and the safest place for humans is the same as the video game...on the end of a controller.

 

[Gutter Boy]

We get one of lowest state pensions in europe compared to our median wage. For that you have to pay in for 35 years to get it fully and work till you are 67.
Maybe start with not giving full sickness payments to crackheads and alcoholics. Or start deporting the illegal migrants instead of putting them up in hotels.

Pensions account for 55% of the benefits bill. Unemployment, housing and child support is 30%. Disability support is 15%

You can't cut the benefits bill without taking a big proportion from the main source of cost

 

[glasgowspur]

Pensions account for 55% of the benefits bill. Unemployment, housing and child support is 30%. Disability support is 15%

You can't cut the benefits bill without taking a big proportion from the main source of cost

Still can't understand why we pay child support, can't afford them then don't have them.
Take that away and the free child care from the grandparents and watch the burn.

 

[Lilbaz]

Pensions account for 55% of the benefits bill. Unemployment, housing and child support is 30%. Disability support is 15%

You can't cut the benefits bill without taking a big proportion from the main source of cost

Yes you can. £5bn a year on accomodation for asylum seekers alone. Let alone healthcare, clothing, food etc...
£130m a year on disability payments for drug addicts and alcoholic. Get them clean and in work.
£14.1bn foreign aid.

But you'd rather take from your parents and grandparents who have worked their whole life for it and give it to strangers. Or people that want to get off their face.

Sorry for me you look after your family first.

Te £146bn pensions are spent in this country. Every pound spent is taxed. It creates jobs. Which those people then pay tax. It's not going abroard.

 

[johnaliola]

State pensions were okay before the state second pension was removed in 2016. It surprises me how few people are conscious of this robbery.

The maximum current payment for those with full basic and full additional state pension is £415 per week which would only be payable to the boomer generation.

Many people contracted out of this via their pensions schemes as GMP or as Protected rights and it is easy to forget this. The protected rights values of serps/s2p rebates were typically invested in funds and worth hundreds of thousands.

I did not contract out, and accrued state second pension between 1988 and 2016 which should have been worth hundreds of pounds a week - but it was washed away in 2016.

So whilst I cannot accrue more state pension as i had already maxed out with the s2p at age 50, had i contracted out I would have plenty of headroom to accrue more state pension!

I and many like me have been cheated out of quite a big deal of comfort in retirement. Civil servants and MPs neatly sidestep all these negative impacts as they do time after time.

 

[les paul]

Yes you can. £5bn a year on accomodation for asylum seekers alone. Let alone healthcare, clothing, food etc...
£130m a year on disability payments for drug addicts and alcoholic. Get them clean and in work.
£14.1bn foreign aid.

But you'd rather take from your parents and grandparents who have worked their whole life for it and give it to strangers. Or people that want to get off their face.

Sorry for me you look after your family first.

Te £146bn pensions are spent in this country. Every pound spent is taxed. It creates jobs. Which those people then pay tax. It's not going abroard.

Even accepting all your figures, they total £19.23bn. That's your absolute theoretical maximum, assuming you could eliminate every penny of that spending, which you obviously couldn't.

You've also mixed up entirely different budgets, overstated asylum accommodation costs and potentially double-counted expenditure.

More importantly, you've provided no evidence that those savings would be sufficient to meet whatever budgetary target you're talking about, let alone address the longer-term growth in pension expenditure.

Nobody is saying pensioners must have their benefits cut. The point is that pension spending represents an enormous proportion of welfare expenditure, and listing three unrelated areas of spending doesn't make that arithmetic disappear.

You've demonstrated where you'd prefer to cut spending, not that your proposals eliminate the need to examine pensions.

 

[Lilbaz]

Even accepting all your figures, they total £19.23bn. That's your absolute theoretical maximum, assuming you could eliminate every penny of that spending, which you obviously couldn't.

You've also mixed up entirely different budgets, overstated asylum accommodation costs and potentially double-counted expenditure.

More importantly, you've provided no evidence that those savings would be sufficient to meet whatever budgetary target you're talking about, let alone address the longer-term growth in pension expenditure.

Nobody is saying pensioners must have their benefits cut. The point is that pension spending represents an enormous proportion of welfare expenditure, and listing three unrelated areas of spending doesn't make that arithmetic disappear.

You've demonstrated where you'd prefer to cut spending, not that your proposals eliminate the need to examine pensions.

Gb made a statement saying you can't cut the benefits bill without cutting pension. I pointed out that you can.
I never mentioned any target. Never said that it should be cut completely. Merely saying it could be cut.